Reddish Brown Algae taking over

I am new to the Marine aquarium world, and have a question regarding my 55 Gal Marine tank. It has been setup for a couple months now, and the water quality is pretty good. Nitrites are nonexistant, but the Nitrates are a little high. Not super high but enough to show up. I use a test strip and it shows a light pink. Says safe on the included color chart. My question is about a reddish Brown Algae that has started growing on everything directly under the light. What can I do to contain this or get rid of it all together. I don't like to use chemicals especially since I'm trying to establish some live rock. The algae showed up before I put the live rocks in, and it has started to caver them as well. I run a Filstar x3 filter with BIostars Seagel and Purigen, as well as 2 power heads alternating with sponge filters. I only use the venturI air on one of them. Would more air flow help my problem. Anything anyone can advise would be very welcome.

 

What are you running the powerheads at? I heard that if the motion is not that fast that stagnant areas would grow algae. What clean up crews do you have? snails, crabs or shrimps?

 

My power heads are running around 250 gph. I recently added an Aqua C Remora Skimmer and it seems to have slowed it down a bit. At any given point I have one 250 gph powerhead, 300 gph canister, and a 300 gph skimmer going. As for clean up crew, well I don't have any but have been looking around. Any suggestions would be immensely appreciated. Currently I have 25 lbs of live rock with more on the way, and two 3 year old Columbian sharks. The Sharks will be moving to a larger tank when it becomes necessary. The only fish I know I want for this tank is a Clark's Anemone fish. I would like to keep an anemone someday, but need to better my marine skills first. Again any help on clean up crew would be more welcome than I can express.

 

I would not get shrimps or hermit crabs for clean up crews. hermit crabs will try to kill your fish when they get older. Shrimps will be eating by the sharks. Maybe snails. You can also check out ebay in the pet supplies area. I will give you a link to follow and you can see what they have. Tips: Dont buy bumble bee snails as they will eat other snails and don't get sea urchins cause they will knock over your rockwork and eat your live rock to death.


Later on when you move the sharks. Buy some cleaner shrimps. They will clean off the parasites on your fish like ich.

 

I had a huge break out of cyano bacteria it was a reddish brown. I used CHEMICLEAN red slime remover within 24 hours tank was clear I did a 30% waterchange and all my levels went back to normal. If you do have the cyano bacteria I found nothing to eat it or clean it, I was told since it is a bacteria nothing will. The CHEMICLEAN worked great.

Good Luck

 

I'd be weary of using chemicals for algae probs. It doesn't address the reasons for the algae growth - overfeeding, nitrates, phospates, dissolved organics, slow water flow, etc. Try to get all these straightened out and the red slime algae probs should slowly go away. Using RO water with Kalkwasser should help too (saltwater tanks).

 

I found my problem to be a diatom algae out break, due to high phosphate and silicate levels in my local tap water. SeaChems Phosguard after a water change and a RO/DI filter for top offs has corrected the problem. Since these changes and a much improved lighting system my live Rock has exploded into life. Moral of this story is..........TEST YOUR TAP WATER, atleast once in awhile. Thanks for all the advice.

 

I'm glad you found the problem! I had exactly the same issue...

 

I just got a outbrak of this as well. Is it part of the cycle? I saw a micro star yesterday crawling on the sand

 

My problem started with my local tap water, and was literally fed by my own bad feeding habits. This "algae" is really just a bunch of really tiny tiny organisms called diatoms. These diatoms have a hard silicate shell which grows a little algae giving it its color. They require silicate to survive. In my case it was coming from the tap water. I have pretty well eradicated it by using "Phos-Guard" by Seachem which eliminates Phosphates and Silicates. I started by cleaning all the brown stuff out that I could, then treating the tank with Phos-Guard every time I put new water in. I also adjusted my feeding habits, as excess nutrients will always cause problems. I have actually furthered that to using an RO/DI filter for the tap water. It is a little slower but well worth it. I have also found that Turbo Grazer Snails will do quite a number on them. The main thing is to get the phosphate and silicates out. Without these, the little buggers will starve. And practice good maintenance habits.

I hope this helps. It was quite a learning experience for me and I did quite a lot of research. I think I could answer any questions you might have. As I said, my problem is no more. Though, I am now having a cyanobacteria problem. Just can't win sometimes lol. Well, to the web for some learnin' ;D

 

Thanks. I just don't know if tis part of the cycle or not. The green algae carpeted the tank then went away now its the red slime gunk that's taking over. If it don't go away I will try some stuff that's copper safe and ok to use.

 

Red Slime was my next problem after I got rid of the brown stuff. I found that syphoning out as much of the slime as possible, then treating with a red slime remover is the best solution. This red slime is cyanobacteria. It's not actually algae. Seems to be a very common beginners plague. I'm just getting rid of mine now. I've done 3 treatments so far. I let mine get out of control because I was not sure what it was. It looked kinda cool when it was small. Next thing I knew it was every where. Definitely try red slime remover. I used Blue Life's Red SlimeControl. It really messes with your protein skimmer, makes a lot of foam. I had to run my skimmer only under supervision for a couple days. The dead red slime does float a needs to be skimmed or other wise removed.

 

Red Slime was my next problem after I got rid of the brown stuff.  I found that syphoning out as much of the slime as possible, then treating with a red slime remover is the best solution. This red slime is cyanobacteria. It's not actually algae. Seems to be a very common beginners plague. I'm just getting rid of mine now. I've done 3 treatments so far. I let mine get out of control because I was not sure what it was. It looked kinda cool when it was small. Next thing I knew it was every where. Definitely try red slime remover.  I used Blue Life's Red SlimeControl. It really messes with your protein skimmer, makes a lot of foam. I had to run my skimmer only under supervision for a couple days. The dead red slime does float a needs to be skimmed or other wise removed.

I just wanted to say that this method was found to be ineffective. Please refer to this other post. I got some great info from one of the members here at Fishlore

 

Stupid diatoms.

Hey look it's my Diatom post. Here I was freaking out when it turns out most everyone gets the diatom stage lol.

Yet another example of what FishLore has done for me in the last year.

 

Hey look it's my Diatom post. Here I was freaking out when it turns out most everyone gets the diatom stage lol.

Yet another example of what FishLore has done for me in the last year.

I agree there!! I just got past that stage myself. Now I'm seeing little bits of green algae. Just a couple of tiny spots. Not sure what that is yet.

 

I agree there!! I just got past that stage myself. Now I'm seeing little bits of green algae. Just a couple of tiny spots. Not sure what that is yet.

Is it fuzzy, wirey, or crusty. Fine fuzzy algae is something you need to get a cleaner for. Wirey could be some thing like Chaetomorpha. Crusty would be green coraline. What does yours look like?

 

Is it fuzzy, wirey, or crusty. Fine fuzzy algae is something you need to get a cleaner for. Wirey could be some thing like Chaetomorpha. Crusty would be green coraline. What does yours look like?

I can't tell yet. Right now it's on some of my base rock that hasn't transformed much into live rock. The green looks more like it was painted on. There isn't much, at least not yet. Odds are I'll have a better idea tomorrow.

 

Ah yes, I know the look. I recently added a piece of dry rock and it's getting that same coat of paint in places. It's probably the early stages of plain ol fuzz algae. Snail food if you will. Stage 2 in the algae cycle lol. The dry rock had a small hopeless diatom stage. It gave in to stage 2 and the snails quickly took up residence. Some Ceriths have even laid eggs on it. They do love to lay those eggs. As long as you have something like a turbo grazer or other algae scrubbing snails you shouldn't have too much trouble with it. If you don't then it's probably time to think about it lol. I know the feeling of the live rock not coming to life. It took mine forever to really start coming to life. It'll get there lol.

 

That sounds about right. I have 4 pieces of base rock in there. One started converting almost immediately. The others are a bit slower. One is slowly going but the other 2 not yet. It's on one of them that I've started to see it. First it was the diatoms, finally got that under control (too much food) and now this.

I have 2 kinds of snails, nataruis (sp?) and bah...can't remember the name of the other..they like hanging on the glass. Starts with an A. Anyways...I also have 2 emerald crabs.

 

Astrea? Good algae eater. You may want to think about a couple more or a Mexican Turbo snail. Ceriths are good for when the algae gets in hard to reach places. They're a little smaller than the Astreas.

 

How long after your diatom outbreak was your tank cycled? I'm just finishing going through it (I hope) with the 90 gallon.